Simplex-IT's 2018 In Review!

2018 is done.  Another year is behind us.  And it’s been…well, we’ll just say a “strange” year and leave it at that.  If you’ve been following us for any time, you know that we like to reminisce a bit every January.  From a Simplex-IT standpoint…we were busy:

• Highest revenue growth (from a $ or % perspective).
• Fastest personnel growth (adding 3 new positions during 2018, interviewing for a 4th as we speak).
• Already have 3 new customers set to ramp up in January.
• Added two new position types, New Business Development (John McCarthy) and Service Dispatcher (Heather Gezzar).
• Published my first book (“a CEO’s Survival Guide to Information Technology”), which has been a success.
• Held our first non-picnic annual event in August at the Quarter Up Video Arcade bar.  Had about 60 attendees.
• Saw our new offering of CoMITs (Co-Managed IT services) go pretty darn well.
• I Presented at IT Nation, TMT’s Quarterly meeting and a webinar on CoMITs to a total of about 500 other MSP’s.
• Started writing my second book, essentially teaching my competition how to sell and do CoMITs.  Yup, not the brightest bulb on the tree in terms of maintaining competitive advantage<g>.  Should be out early Q2.
• We presented about 25 or so webinars through the year.
• I spoke at about 10 events on various IT topics (usually around Cyber Security).
• Successfully held our first customer-only event, called the “QT” (for “Quarterly Customer Training”).
• Became a Sponsor for the annual “Cleveland Give Camp”.
• Created our second and third conference booth concepts.
• Sponsored a couple of Golf Outings.
• Nailed down our marketing strategies, developing some good KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to measure success with.
• Implemented organizational Quarterly Goals, and processes for department heads to develop them.
• Implemented publicizing our Quarterly Goals (and how well we did 3 months later).
• Began formal implementation of the EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System) management framework (which will really hit high gear in ’19).

My brain is continuing with the transition from working for the business to working on the business.  Anyone who’s built an organization from 0 to something probably understands this concept.  Back in 2007 I was a geek.  Yeah, with a lot of management experience, but still a geek.  The primary goals of the brain cells were to solve IT problems, implement solutions, all that good stuff.Not anymore.  Don’t get me wrong, I can still geek it out (and still do, I might add).  But my time is much more involved with developing the business and implementing an organization that can be more effective and efficient on the geek stuff than I could ever be.There are still days when I can feel the brain cells “migrating”.The 3 that I have left, anyway<g>.Happy New Year, let’s get to work!